


to die upon a twisted blade

by missdulcerosea



Category: Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magika | Puella Magi Madoka Magica
Genre: Anthropomorphic, Canon Compliant, F/F, Heavy Angst, but not all of them, i mean at least some of these are, vent fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2020-01-11
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:02:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21926413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missdulcerosea/pseuds/missdulcerosea
Summary: Oneshots and ficlets for our girls that are chockful of angst. Because it wouldn't be the show we know and remember if there isn't despair to offset the hope.
Relationships: Kriemhild Gretchen/Oktavia von Seckendorff
Kudos: 10





	1. Chapter 1

Kriemhild Gretchen was beautiful once.

Whatever she had is gone now. Her skin is pale and sallow, battered in jagged pink-and-white scars that litter her arms and mar her once round face, pink hair matted and tangled and crusted with half-dried blood. Her dress, too, was once pink and white and bedecked with red ribbons and lace, but is now tainted black in grief and hangs about her legs in tattered, dirty fabric. Dead white carnations are strewn about in her hair as a flower crown—a jest, a copy of the gold crown that could have sat atop her head as a princess.

And she kneels to the ground in grief, hands clasped together in a prayer that will never be answered. There is so much blinding light spread over the world—light that hurts people’s eyes, cruelty that pierces through hearts and tears them to ribbons. She has to stop it all—she is Atlas, the titan that takes on the weight of the world and holds up the sky no matter how much the ground cracks beneath her feet.

“Give it up, Witch of Mercy.”

The voice might have sung the sweetest tunes beheld once, but now it is rusty and monotone. Oktavia Von Seckendorff peers from behind her wrecked visor—once her cape billowed out behind her and her mermaid’s tail shone with bright, dark blue scales but now she sits atop her pillar far away from the sea, armor rusted and still shivering even with the cloak draped around her shoulders.

“What do you mean, give it up?” Kriemhild asks.

“Give up your quest, princess of mine. There’s nothing left—you failed! The world is gone beyond your grasp, there is no way to reverse the damage your precious subjects have left behind. You claim that you care for humans, but can you still love them even with all the horrors they’ve wreaked upon the world? Can you still love Pandora even after she opened the box?”

“No one told Pandora what was in the box, Mermaid Witch. She opened it even though she was instructed against it because she was told not to. How can you blame Pandora when no one warned her?”

“Because what did Pandora do when she opened the box? She faded from history, that’s what she did! And that’s what’ll happen to the world you love so much even though you’ve been cast from the throne—you died fighting Walpurgisnacht, and not a soul will know of the sacrifice their ruler made. They’ll have you fade from history, with those who shoulder on remembering you as a monster. Is that what you want? Can you love your humans knowing that they know nothing about you and will so damningly tarnish your memory in return?”

“There is good. There is mercy. And I will show them both.”

“Follow my advice, Kriemhild,” and here, Oktavia jabs her sword into the ground, causing cracks to spread out from where the metal pierces, “Just give up. Give up on that foolish quest of yours. It’s inevitable.”

Then Kriemhild clasps her arms around her, squeezing her tightly and letting one hand stroke at her short, choppily cut blue hair. When she speaks, sobs choke her every word.

“I know it’s inevitable, but I cannot stand idly by and watch them destroy themselves. I can at least try to rid the world of pain. And I did. I really did try. And I wanted you with me when I did.”

Her broken crown, her rusted sword, Oktavia slowly hugs Kriemhild back.

“It’s not fair! I gave up my voice for the sake of someone I cared about, and he never gave me a thing in return—not even before I discovered the truth about myself, no, he never cared for me in the beginning. It hurt waking up to find that your voice has vanished all because of one measly little wish—It hurts so much—It—”

Now it is Oktavia’s turn to sob.

“We can fix this, Oktavia. I know it. So please just let me stay by your side, even if it’ll hurt us both—the pain will go away in the end.”

Oktavia looks down, burying her head against the crook of Kriemhild’s neck. They are drowning spectres, drowning in a sea of lies.

“It will, won’t it?”

“Yes…” Oktavia murmurs, and nods. Her throat is raw from crying.

“It hurts, but we’ll find a way out.”

So says the witch of mercy, and they stand there trembling in the silence waiting for the day when the darkness that shrouds their old world finally fades away.


	2. tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> set during timeline 3.

In the silence of her bedroom, the clock ticks away on the wall and Madoka waits.

It is far too dark in her room to catch a glimpse of the time beneath the walls shrouded in shadow, but Madoka does not care. She lies awake alone that night, and while her body is safe and secure beneath the thick bedsheets and she is shielded by her army of stuffed animals, she still trembles and her mind is still back at the train station mere hours earlier. Memories of what had happened earlier that night flit through her mind—Kyoko’s frantic sputtering of what had happened to Sayaka, the metamorphasis from girl to larva to hellish mermaid of a monster, sitting upright in the chill of the train station and letting an arrow fly loose towards the Soul Gem on Mami’s hat…

The memories make her shudder, and she hides her face in her pillow damp with tears. While she’s still clinging on because she doesn’t want to morph into a witch like Sayka did, she wodners if it’s possible in her nightmares. To die in her sleep, for her Soul Gem to become irreversably tainted with shadows and for her subconscious to vomit up the rancorous remains of what was once Madoka Kaname’s mind, her witch casting a shadow far and wide and swallowing up those who dare to wander too close. She doesn’t want that. She doesn’t want it at all.

So she pads down the empty corridor of her house, pink eyes darting from suspicious corner to suspicious corner. With the lights dimmed her house is a labyrinth, witch’s familiar’s lurking in the night that by day assume the form of ordinary chairs and tables. She finds her parents’ room and doesn’t knock, nudging against the open door so it creaks. There her parents are, nestled next to one another in bed. Madoka bends down next to her mother and crawls under the covers and feels her shift.

“…Madoka? What’s the matter, sweetie?”

There is a lump in her throat because she has a truth to tell, and even then that’s not enough. She cannot let the words of the deaths she has seen fall past her lips, nor tell her mother of the oncoming storm of Walpurgisnacht. Her mother will most likely see her words as flight fantasies or tall tales, the products of a sleep-deprived mind—or, and Madoka thinks this might be even worse, she might be believed but there is nothing they will do.

Knowing that, she lies.

“Bad dream. Got too scared to sleep alone.”

“Oh, Madoka, I’m so sorry.” Her mother wraps her arms around her, rocking her back and forth. “You can stay here for the night… it’ll be okay…”

There are only so many days she can count down before the curtain is pulled away and Walpurgisnacht takes the stage. There is only so much time before her Soul Gem hatches into a Grief Seed. But for a little bit, she pretends that a nightmare is all it is and falls asleep in her mother’s arms, where the next morning she will rise and pretend that she walks a world without magical girls.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading! take care.


	3. dance of the black swan

It never meant a thing from the start, did it?

It meant nothing, Homura realizes. From the very moment she’d declared her wish to protect Madoka Kaname, she was set on a fruitless journey that would only end in her demise. Here she is, Siegfried the fool—destined to watch her beloved Odette again and again transform into a swan with feathery wings as pale as freshly-fallen snow, and then stare helplessly upon her dear Madoka as those wings are tainted black.

Again. And again. And again.

Homura Akemi is the star of her own show, the ballerina that graces (or curses) the stage she dances upon. Performance after performance she dances with arms outstretched, till the blood begins to soak through her wood-lined ballet slippers. It was all a lie. While her show encompasses ballet slippers with pink silk, she is doomed to dance on stage until her feet begin to bleed. She cannot stumble or fall or faint, she has to keep going because there may just be a chance the curse will be shattered and her dearest Madoka will not become a swan by the end.

She has seen countless magical girls die, and has steeled herself to their deaths. When she saw Sayaka’s Soul Gem shatter to bits and leave the thin little bullet-life Grief Seed in its wake, she did nothing. She has seen Mami lured with the tantalizing promised of company into the maw of the beast, head bitten off as she dies unremembered by everyone save for Homura and the others. She has seen Kyoko let her ribbons down, dark red hair rippling out behind her, and say her prayers one last time.

But none of that compares to the darkness that swallows up her heart when she watches her beloved corrupted.

So she corrupts herself. Maybe Homura once had an inkling of a chance as the white swan dancing upon stage, but she is Odile—not Siegfried. Siegfried was a hero who would do anything within his limits to save the princess. Homura is the black swan, who would do anything even if it was beyond her limits. If it ended in her death or corruption, at least Madoka Kaname would be alive.

The darkness swallows her up, but Homura welcomes it. She lets that darkness spill across the universe and cage her world. This is the black swan’s dance—she has had it engraved into her memory from the start. She lets her hair down and spits out all of the memories—the memory of when she’d first met Madoka, the memory of watching Madoka’s Grief Seed crumple and Kriemhild Gretchen be vomited up from what remained, the memory of the bullet going quiet when she finally raised the gun at Madoka’s behest. If she has to bear the weight of them, it only makes it fair that those responsible for sending her back deserve to share the burden with her too.

And Homura the demon waits. Gone are her days of being a swan. She’s corrupted and shattered and broken beyond repair, rancorous and—if the show goes in her favor—eventually forgotten.

But at least her Odette is free from the curse until she remembers.

And for Homura the demon—Odette, the nutcracker witch who’d defend her now lost princess to the end, the ballerina trapped forever upon the stage—that is enough.

**Author's Note:**

> hhhhh i'm really not feeling well as i upload this. this didn't start out as a vent but towards the end i finished it when i was in a really emotionally bad place so here we are now??? 
> 
> thanks for reading. hope all goes well for you.


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